Stow your gripes about No Doubt’s Push and Shove, the mega-platinum quartet’s long-overdue return to recording after a decade of solo albums, side projects, making babies, cash-grab tours and general dormancy.

Yank the average lifelong fan off the streets of the band’s native Anaheim and you’ll likely hear the same complaints critics have made in even the kindest reviews. Half of them, I bet, will cop to flat-out ignoring it – notice that the album barely sold 100,000 copies in its first week of release, or one-sixth as many as the second disc from English upstart Mumford & Sons.

I’ve scarcely come across anyone willing to spin the new collection who hasn’t nit-picked it to shreds.

“It’s just another Gwen Stefani album” – that tops the list of disappointed groans. Savvier listeners toss out variations on “it’s a bunch of Tony Kanal jams guest starring Gwen.” And those who still aren’t on board with the danceable advances of 2001’s Rock Steady, logically extended on Push and Shove, tend to resort to the usual trope: “I wish they’d get back to their roots.”

None of that actually applies. Love or loathe the latest batch – I find it unsurprisingly half-strong after so long away, enjoyable in spots but nowhere near as irresistible as its predecessor – you can’t say it isn’t a full-band effort befitting its equitable four-square cover.

Stefani’s personality and still-improving voice (it’s getting more powerful with age) can’t help but be what you notice first; she’s always been Debbie Harry for O.C.’s Blondie. But she’s no more or less crucial to the framework than ever-underrated guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young, mighty as ever but with finer finesse in his 40s when it comes to worldly grooves, or the group’s groove-seeker, bassist Kanal, without whom this band might not have had a post-ska-punk phase.

Yet you can still pitch all that into a heap alongside rants from the politically correct police about that pointlessly pulled video for second single “Looking Hot.” (New rule: no more playing Cowboys & Indians in videos, it might offend someone.) Why? Because grousing is as irrelevant as the record itself.

Proof: The new stuff served next to no purpose (and barely got a shout-out intro) during Saturday’s show at Gibson Amphitheatre, the first of a whopping seven sold-out nights at the 6,200-seat Universal CityWalk venue, enough fans to nearly fill Honda Center three times over.

Yes, they played five cuts from it, including four of the best: the title track to open, infectious lead-off hit “Settle Down” toward the end, and tender takes on the album’s more wistful bits, “Sparkle” and “One More Summer,” tucked into a scaled-down segment in the middle of the 19-song set. Even with the one stinker – the not-ironic-enough “Looking Hot,” a curious choice to leave for the encore – the band stripped away Spike Stent’s slick production to restore some innate hard-charging feistiness to the tune.

Somehow seeing Stefani pogo to it rather than slip into faux-sexy or cat-prowl mode elicited a different kind of energy. Or maybe she was just gearing up for the next blast, an unexpected dip into The Beacon Street Collection for the Sublime-y skank ’n’ thrash of “Total Hate,” which they tore into with concentrated fervency, as if summoning their younger garage-destroying selves.

“We never thought we’d ever play this song again,” she said as an introduction, but fans voted for its inclusion online and No Doubt obliged.

Yet therein lies the confusion over how this gang should best get back to its roots: which roots? Once Tragic Kingdom took off, the nebulous earlier stuff that makes Ska Parade junkies nostalgic was quickly cast aside. The idea that they would revisit that era is just as juvenile as insisting they should have made another album like their blockbuster breakthrough – as if they could ever be heartbroken and struggling enough to create something so determined and zeitgeist-tapping again.

Though No Doubt’s evolution was needlessly stalled throughout the ’00s, the reality is that the group has never stopped propelling forward. What has held things together so solidly – the music and the band – is recognizable identity. At their best – and Saturday night they often were – there’s a vitality achieved that courses through track after track, regardless of stylistic detours.

So it was again at this “first show we’ve done in about three and a half years,” Stefani acknowledged after a slam through “Hella Good” that had the place roaring and leaping in unison. Not only did Push and Shove songs slot so seamlessly into the mix that a casual fan would have been hard-pressed to figure out whether they were old or new, but the bulk of the performance essentially picked up where the reunion outing of 2009 left off.

Their fashions are even similar, collectively rocking the black-and-white checkered style, with Gwen in a shimmering bodysuit-and-boots look that would make Shirley Manson envious. (Young, ever the gender-bender, also began in a tight and revealing get-up – but soon enough stripped down to skivvies.)

Nothing about their choices was surprising yet everything about it was satisfying, careening from an extra blunted “Underneath It All” to ripping renditions of “Ex-Girlfriend” and “New” that seemed faster than before, bolstered by nimble riffing from Dumont, and concluding with all those crowd-thrilling monsters from Tragic Kingdom – “Sunday Morning,” “Don’t Speak,” “Just a Girl,” “Spiderwebs” to end it all.

They’d be first to admit it wasn’t flawless: “You guys are like the dress rehearsal,” Stefani half-joked after having some trouble removing a glittering red coat she wore for the encore. (Some lucky devotee in the front row, who helped her out of it, went home with a very expensive souvenir.) She also fessed-up to flubbing a line or two of “Sparkle,” a sequel of sorts to the similarly introspective “Running,” one of only a few hits they didn’t play. (“Bathwater” was another, and for a familiar cover they chose their version of Talk Talk's “It's My Life,” not their similarly faithful redo of Adam and the Ants' “Stand and Deliver.”)

Any detectable mistakes didn’t matter. The boys in the band, including crucial additions Stephen Bradley and Gabrial McNair, remain as instinctively tight as any group from their generation or later, and their singer sounds better than ever, even when her phrasing on “Don’t Speak” turned messy. Rustiness like that was easily covered by heartfelt enthusiasm and believable emotion – never more so than during the unplugged portion, begun with a superb rethinking of “Hey You!” and including a moving version of “Simple Kind of Life” that captured an intimacy you rarely find at large-scale concerts anymore.

Through that whole stretch, Gwen gave the best vocal performance I’ve heard from her in virtually 20 years of covering No Doubt. No artifice and posing, just pipes aplenty.

It was the clear highlight of a robust show that should only grow sharper as this every-other-night pattern wears on for much of two weeks. By the end of it, they’ll have silenced the naysayers who think they’re washed up. There’s still a lot of push-and-shove left in ’em yet.

Obviously this was foremost a big occasion for the headliner, but it was also a showcase of bands featuring L.A. women, given hearty opening sets from Nico Vega (fronted by primal howler Aja Volkman) and recent breakout act Grouplove (featuring bouncy co-vocalist Hannah Hooper).

The former seemed a bit too heavy for most people; younger attendees, who may never have seen No Doubt before, had also surely not encountered a force like Volkman, whose in-your-face approach evokes early Patti Smith and Siouxsie Sioux while retaining the melodic appeal of Florence Welch. She and her crew belong on a bill with Dead Sara. But Grouplove impressed well beyond its catchy ditty "Tongue Tied."

Powered by a first-rate drummer (Ryan Rabin) with the chops to go stick-to-stick against, say, old Smashing Pumpkins anchor Jimmy Chamberlain, the quintet roared unexpectedly, adding considerably more intensity and structural complexity than you get from indie-clone fluff. Their outfits may be goofy but their sound isn't.

No Doubt, with Grouplove and Nico Vega opening, plays again at Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal CityWalk on Nov. 26, 28 and 30 and then Dec. 2, 4 and 6. Tickets are sold out, but I bought my plum Saturday spot the day before on StubHub for $35 less than face value.

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